1. Field of the Invention
This invention employs a camouflage technique developed in early World War II where a distant object may be hidden by matching the light intensity on the front side of an object with the light intensity in the background of the object. By matching the light intensities of the object and its background, the shadows and outlines of that object which make it visible to the human eye are reduced. For example, the British would put a row of lights with adjustable light intensities on the wings of their aircraft to match the background light intensity of the sky. This would aid in concealing their aircraft when viewed from a long distance.
In the present invention, not only is the background light intensity matched along any direction in which the object may be viewed, but a real image of that background is projected between the viewer and the object to be concealed. This is accomplished by the use fiber optic cables used to bend any light coming at the object around it without altering the direction of the light.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Fiber optic cables are used to transmit data from one location to another. A fiber optic cable (F.O.C.) consists of a bundle of individual fiber strand elements which are translucent thereby allowing light to travel from one end of the strand to the other. At each end of the F.O.C. are the ends of the many individual elements. For image data, each one of these ends make up one pixel of the image data.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,992,587 issued Jul. 18, 1961 to John W. Hicks, Jr. et al. discloses a F.O.C. and method of making the same, wherein the internal reflection of the light is high in each element. Furthermore, means are provided at each end of the cable for preventing stray light from entering the cable.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,424 issued Oct. 12, 1976 to Ken Steinacher and U.S. Pat. No. 4,969,707 issued Nov. 13, 1990 to Ralph C. Hopkins disclose the use of F.O.C.s used to provide image data from the rear of a vehicle to the operator of the vehicle instead of the conventional rear view mirror.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,167,303 issued Sep. 11, 1979 to Terry P. Bowen, et al. discloses a fiber optic connector for connecting a plurality of fiber optic cables to another plurality of like fiber optic cables while maintaining accurate alignment when connected.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,189,207 issued Feb. 19, 1980 to Charles B. Fisher et al. discloses a F.O.C. having a portion of the cable where the reflectivity of each element is reduced.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,397,524 issued Aug. 9, 1983 to Kozo Yoshimura et al. discloses an image transmitting F.O.C. and method of making the same, in which the relative position of the elements of the F.O.C. are maintained throughout the cable so that each pixel of image data entering on end of the cable is in the same relative position with every other pixel of image data once it reaches the other end of the cable.
None of the prior art show the use of F.O.C.s to conceal an object as used in the present invention.